Parthenon

The Parthenon is a former temple (dedicated to the goddess Athena) on the Acropolis of Athens in Athens, Greece, built from 447 to 432 BC. It was built at immense material and financial cost to the Athenians, with the Athenian leader Pericles coming up with the project, supervising it, and overseeing its completion. His opponents accused him of using Athens like a prostitute, but, once the glorious Parthenon was complete, all of his critics were silenced. The Parthenon's sculptures were built by Phidias, and the temple functioned as both a temple to Athena and as the city's treasury. The Parthenon became a symbol of the city's splendor during the "Golden Age of Athens", and it became the enduring symbol of Ancient Greece, Athenian democracy, and Western civilization. In the final decade of the 6th century AD, it was converted into a Christian church, one of the few pagan buildings or shrines to survive the Christians' cultural purges. After the Ottoman conquest, it was converted into a mosque during the 1460s, and, during the Morean War with Venice in the 1680s, the Ottomans used the mosque as a munitions dump. On 26 September 1687, a Venetian cannonball hit the munitions dump, and the resulting explosion heavily damaged the Parthenon and its sculptures. From 1800 to 1803, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin purchased some of the surviving sculptures from the Turks, and the "Elgin Marbles" were sold to the British Museum in London in 1816. Today, the Parthenon's remains are a major tourist attraction.